Courtesy of Judith Gregg Librarian Catherine Arbogast heads out with a personalized book delivery from the Los Altos main library.

Love of learning and curiosity about the world sometimes grow only more urgent as a person spends more and more time at home, limited by age, health condition, or both. Librarians head out from the Los Altos main l...

Already known as an innovator in the tech field, Google Inc. is now moving in on the art world.

The Mountain View-based company July 11 launched the “Paint the Town” contest, a “moving art experiment” that invites California residents over the age of 13 to submit physical or digital artwork that would decorate the door...

Traci Newell/Town Crier The six-week, tuition-free Stretch to Kindergarten program, hosted at Bullis Charter School, serves children who have not attended preschool. A teacher leads children in singing about the parts of a butterfly, above.

courtesy of Rishi Bommannan Rishi Bommannan cycled from Bates College in Maine to his home in Los Altos Hills, taking several selfies along the way. He also raised nearly $13,000 for the Livestrong Foundation, which supports cancer patients.

The Town Crier’s recent article on coyotes venturing down from the foothills in search of sustenance referenced the organization Project Coyote (“Recent coyote attacks keep residents on edge,” July 1). Do not waste your time contac...

Photos by Alicia Castro/Town Crier Local residents participate in an exercise class at the Grant Park Senior Center, above. Betsy Reeves, below left with Gail Enenstein, lobbied for senior programming in south Los Altos.

Grace Wilson Franks, our beloved mother and grandmother, left us peacefully on July 16, 2015 just a few weeks short of her 92nd birthday. She was born to Ross and Florence (Cruzan) Wilson in rural Tulare, California on Septem...

Most of us have a place inside our hearts and minds that occasionally causes us trouble. For some, it is sadness, depression or despair. For others, it may be fear, anger, resentment or myriad other emotional “dark places” that at times seem to hij...

After the Dow Jones industrial averages closed higher for 10 straight days, a market pullback was not surprising, because bear markets often begin when earnings and dividends are at all-time highs.

Dividends for the S&P 500 hit a record high as well and could trend higher this year, as big banks are expected to increase their payouts soon in response to the Federal Reserve’s latest round of stress tests.

U.S. equities have pushed up their run for 10 consecutive days without a major consolidation since the start of the year, a result of funds flowing out of money markets and fixed incomes to equities. This kind of trend doesn’t change easily, and we can look for more of it.

Companies are doing better than expected and stockpiling money hand over fist. There is also hope that the Fed will continue printing money with urgency until unemployment falls below 6.5 percent. A shift from this policy could rattle the market and bring down equity prices. Sooner or later, a correction will occur – and it may be a good thing, to keep the market affordable.

Although interest rates are ridiculously low and have a bullish effect on the market, many investors remain skeptical because of continued gridlock in Washington, D.C.

Two Town Crier “50” companies made headlines last week.

• Microsoft Corp. (MSFT; $28.22) was fined $732 million by the European Union for failing to comply with an antitrust pact concerning its Internet browser. Some versions of the Windows operating system omitted a screen that allowed users to select a default Web browser. Microsoft blamed the violation on a glitch, which impacted the stock share price.

In other news, Microsoft agreed to sell its online advertising program – Atlas Advertising Suite – to Facebook for an undisclosed sum. The move highlights Facebook’s intention to overtake Google as the U.S. leader in online display ads.

Microsoft has a market cap of $233.82 million, with shares up 5.3 percent year to date. The stock currently offers a 3.3 percent dividend yield. Most analysts consider Microsoft a long-term buy or, at worst, a hold.

• LSI Corp. (LSI; $6.79), which designs, develops and markets storage and networking semiconductors worldwide, came across a new outlet for supplying chips to base stations in the disk-drive industry and is ready to break out on the upside. The company recently signed a deal with NetApp Inc. that could make it a game changer for how applications handle data in the future.

LSI boasts a projected earnings-per-share growth rate of 13 percent over the next five years. LSI stock is currently trading 25 percent below its 52-week high.

Recently analysts have downgraded the stock from “outperform” to “market perform.” The high market price is $10, with a low target of $7. While Deutsche Bank has downgraded the stock from a buy to a hold, no analyst has recommended a sell.

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